Program Targets Rise in Deed Forgeries in L.A. County

Amid growing concern about real estate fraud, Los Angeles County officials next year will launch a pilot program to make it harder for crooks to forge deeds.

The two-pronged program is designed to deter such forgeries and to notify victims when they occur. The campaign, approved in September by state lawmakers, will be carried out only in Los Angeles County, where property theft is thought to be more prevalent than elsewhere in the state.

“It’s not totally going to eliminate” real estate fraud, but “it’s going to be very difficult to get away with it if everybody does their job,” said Richard Hughes, assistant registrar-recorder for the county.

Under one initiative, scheduled to take effect Jan. 1, anyone who deeds property in Los Angeles County will have his or her thumbprint taken by a notary public. With a thumbprint as potential evidence, authorities hope that criminals will be less likely to impersonate property owners and forge their signatures on deeds.

Now, a person who deeds property must appear before a notary, provide identification, and sign in the notary’s presence or assert that the signature on the deed is his.

But if the crook has a false ID or the notary is lax, forgeries can occur. The thumbprint will create an audit trail, said David Pitman, chief of the notary public division of the secretary of state’s office.

Even that will not deter forgers who don’t go to notaries but instead steal a notary stamp or have a phony one made.

That is the reason for the second safeguard, which will alert property owners if their signatures have been forged.

Now, county officials record deeds without any effort to verify signatures of notaries or sellers. If a deed is legible and includes signatures and a legal description of the property, it is accepted for filing at the Hall of Records.

This makes it easy for a thief to record a phony deed and then quickly sell the property or use the deed to get a loan. The real owner may be none the wiser until the lender forecloses for non-payment of the note.

Under the new rules, the recorder will have 30 days to notify the owner after a deed is recorded in his or her name. This will alert victims so they can take legal action if their signature has been forged.

The notifications are to start next year, but Hughes said the date is uncertain. With about 3,000 deeds per day recorded in Los Angeles County, it will be “a massive, massive undertaking,” Hughes said.

“What we are doing now is working out a plan (for) how it can best be implemented.”

Giving notice to the victims will not eliminate fraud, said Patricia Goldsmith, an attorney with the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles. But at least, she said, the victims “wouldn’t be in foreclosure when they found out about it.”